The problems with the chat and virtual classroom so far

This is the post I would have made after my first online class on August 1 st

It relates to the face to face session that ran earlier on that day as well.


The implementation of online chat and the virtual classroom in the new instillation of the Blackboard LMS at the uni are clunky

Who would have expected anything else - well me I suppose- I even told the students who turned up to the intro face to face session on how to access the subject that the reason we were using chat was that it was old technology and fairly well proven and would be a good fall back or starting point when we tried newer environments and had issues.

I did try loading the chat in the MAC lab before the class started and I thought there were some issues especially with the virtual classroom side of things.

So I went down to the PC lab to try it - thought we might move there if the thing did not work properly in the MAC lab - it worked on my PC OK.

But nope similar problems seem to exist in the PC lab too. Decided it was a browser issue. It would be best to stay in the MAC lab therefore and run the show and tell session through thee Safari browser rather than Firefox because Safari is developed by MAC and may have all the features and plugins required by the LMS and the java Player for the chat and virtual class environments.

As it turned out that was not a good idea - but I did not have time to find that out before the students started arriving and as could be expected the the whole networked slowed as the students started to log on to the computers at 5.15 and they then also had their own problems logging on as I have found with other classes l - it is always ok for them at home - the network at the university requires a set of passwords that are updated in the labs somehow so they are not set to the correct ones for some students especially those students who often have been enrolled for many years will inevitably have to reset their passwords to access the lab computers even though their log on works at their home perfectly and as they are not going to be using the labs in the future it is a complete distraction and a waste of intellectual energy even talking about different log ons - the students do not need this explained it is not part of the subject but is always the first thing they encounter and I expect it it has at least a peripheral impact on the environments of online and the uni's practices or lack of consideration - whatever

The big issues did not emerge though untill the students went home and tried to access the chat at the designated time of 8.30 pm using a variety of browsers.

One person Christine could not get in at all. She was using a MAC. The MAC environment says on trying to access the chat ( it told me this too ) that the operation system must OSX not 8 or 9 and t go and buy an upgrade ( approximately $300- 400) even though she and I both were using OSx

As I had told her in the face to face class there were some issues with MAC and to use Safari she might have been prepared but I had to send her a message in the online discussion that maybe installing the latest version of Firefox for MAC might be the solution - we will wait and see.

Other people - namely Debbie were having the problems I had down in the PC room - she was on a PC using Internet explorer I think ( I did not ask ) and in the virtual class she could only see the chat window - again I think the problem will be solved if she uses Firefox. But unlike for MAC the latest version of Firefox for PC does not work with the latest version of the Sun Java plugin and I hope she has the old version installed which seems to be OK

I know that it is important to check everything out before you use it in a class but who has the time to check every browser - isnt that the company Blackboard's job how much are we paying for this LMS.